Sling to your cell

Uncertainties over the viability of mobile TV business plans have increased following the announcement that the Slingbox technology will be extended to encompass mobile phones.

A Slingbox essentially lets you watch what appears on your TV set anywhere in the world on a laptop via a broadband connection. Now 3G operator 3UK has done a deal with Sling to allow you to do that on your cellphone.

Because of the unexpectedly high amount of in-home viewing that trials of mobile broadcast TV have demonstrated, any commercial services were always going to be ripe for cannibalisation from Freeview (once it became portable) and pay-TV operators like Sky (once they decided to invest in portable PVRs).

But Sling poses a fresh threat to the mobile TV model outside the home, because the thinking was always that there was 'unused airtime' to be exploited by consumers on long commutes. Sling-enabled 3G phones can now shoehorn themselves into this space, too, without anyone having to invest in expensive new mobile broadcast networks.

The beauty of the Sling model is that the mobile network operator doesn't have to broadcast a large amount of TV channels: in effect, the consumer deploys their own in-home TV set-up as a sort of domestic video-on-demand server. Definitely a development to watch....